Dare you wake the dragon? Fantasy Dice is a roleplaying system to make gaming fun without dumbing it down. Fast paced, highly tactical and low effort for use with your own games. Create NPCs with a single stat. Roll dice, but skip the math. Everything is fast and simple, but there is plenty of depth and tactical choice. There are social conflict rules. Advice for how to run your games and much, much more.

Crimson Exodus is a complete roleplaying game using the Fantasy Dice system with a sword and sorcery feel to it and gives you a big sandbox with everything you need to play. Don your chain hauberk, pick up your sword and shield and join the fray – make it a big shield if you’re going troll hunting.

If this place has been quiet it is only because everyone has been too busy creating lots of new stuff, so be prepared for interesting times ahead.

Chaviro has been so very kind to share his redesigned character sheets for Crimson Exodus in both French and English. The character sheets were designed for the 1st edition of Crimson Exodus, but should work just fine for the 2nd edition and Fantasy Dice.

The character sheets are under a creative commons license (CC-BY-NC) so you can share and modify them as you like, just like most of what’s on offer from Radical Approach.

The 4th Fantasy Grounds convention is open for player bookings and GMs putting up their games. This online roleplaying game convention runs from Thursday evening May 8th to late night Sunday May 11th.

During this convention you can play for free using the great Fantasy Grounds tabletop software and it is a great chance to try out the software, test some new games and make some new online friends who enjoy roleplaying as much as you do.

The Fantasy Dice adventure Echoes of Death has been run before at this convention and comes with a Fantasy Grounds adventure module that can be used with the free Fantasy Dice FG ruleset. If anyone is thinking of hosting a game using the Fantasy Dice ruleset do let me know. I’m happy to help promote your game and explain how to get the most out of the Fantasy Dice ruleset and/or Echoes of Death adventure in a convention game. If you are considering running a Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus game and you are thinking about using the Echoes of Death adventure send me a short message about who you are and what you like about the Fantasy Dice system and I’ll give you a free copy of the Echoes of Death PDF with the FG adventure module.

Set in the Known World of Crimson Exodus, South Meadows is a prosperous Bardur Kingdom surrounded by dangers and weakened by rebellion. To the west war is brewing along the border, while to the south pirates and privateers bleeds trade all across Blood Bay. The serpent river that marks the border to the east is little protection against the hill demons and monsters from the deep barrens of the Grimlands, and with wars brewing everywhere there are all too few mercenaries from the North Meadows.

Download a free PDF from DriveThruRPG with adventure hooks, locations, family trees and NPC stats for South Meadows. Read the speculative tale of Arec’Thual and learn about the Crimson Games.

SciFi Dice takes the Fantasy Dice RPG system and adapts it for science fiction. You will need Fantasy Dice for the complete rules, but SciFi Dice contains complete rules for character creation and swapping avatars, sanity and mental breakdown, wealth, reputation and more as well as advise and genre specific rules for futuristic skills, firearms, electric shock, beam weapons, a damage system that scales from characters to vehicles, spaceships or even a space station and much more such as chases, collisions, remote controlled vehicles and the dangers of space and alien worlds.

It even throws in some new variations such as using the number of successes to determine the degree of success and social networking using skills and reputation.

A ready to play Fantasy Dice adventure for Crimson Exodus or your own fantasy setting. Jump right into a high tension scenario with four Orcs led by a Dwarf, or let your own party discover the ancient underground complex deep in the mountains.

This adventure comes bundled as a zip file with not only the full colour PDF (+ printer friendly version), but high resolution maps, encounter action cards and an adventure module for playing online using Fantasy Grounds II. As well as the PDF and digital files bundle from RPGNow/DriveThruRPG as described below the book is also available to order in full colour print from lulu.

The Adventure PDF

This package contains both a colour version and a printer friendly version without the page background. The adventure comes complete with character sheets and background for a player party with conflicting motivations and strengths and weaknesses that means cooperation is key to survival.

The underground warren was sealed off from the mines above and so can easily be placed anywhere suitable in your own world where ancient and dangerous secrets might lurk deep underground forgotten by all if not for an old and worn map.

The adventure contains many potential encounters using the Fantasy Dice system, not least the gnashers wonderfully illustrated by Forest Immel. It is up to the players how they face or avoid these challenges, and whether they can work together to survive the horrors.

Can the players navigate among the echoes of death to find a treasure worthy of the risk, or will their screams stir ancient horrors better left undisturbed.

The Maps

As part of the package you get two versions of the full resolution 2480×3508 pixels colour map in jpg format of the sprawling underground complex with its many secrets. Drawn by talented map maker Robert Altbauer. Both a pristine GM version and the incomplete and worn player version scribbled with dwarven runes, smudged and stained. If there is a map there must surely be treasure, otherwise why draw a map – right?

Encounter Action Cards

A 12 page bonus set of illustrated cards that can be printed on normal paper or avery business card sheets for a total of 48 double sided encounter cards (also contains the 12 page free action card PDF).

Fantasy Grounds II Adventure Module

The Fantasy Grounds II adventure module can be used together with the free Fantasy Dice ruleset for an online virtual tabletop adventure ready to go (an appropriate Fantasy Grounds II license is required). The adventure module has encounters, items, maps, player character sheets and a fully linked adventure text index to make it easy to run the adventure and share text with the players with minimal typing. This includes GM Map “pins” which link directly to the description for each section of the map. Open the GM map and hold down CTRL to see the pins and then simply click a pin to open the description for that tunnel/cavern/room.

As promised the Fantasy Dice rules module that has been in development for some time now is available on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. This is a great way to run your Crimson Exodus games online.

The ruleset is free for use, but you will require a copy of Fantasy Grounds II which is a commercial software for roleplaying using a virtual online tabletop with 3D dice, interactive character sheets, map and image sharing, chat and much more. I have no affiliation with FGII, but I’ve used their software for years and find it great for hosting and playing in online games.

I can also mention that there is a completely free online game service for Fantasy Dice where you can share character sheets and run games, but Fantasy Grounds II is well established and an online roleplaying game software package which simulates a lot of the tabletop face-to-face experience.

The ruleset comes with an easy installer for windows and has been tested on windows XP, windows 7 and Windows 8. It has a lot of immersive features such as being able to talk in native languages like elven, dwarven, orcish, etc. and the speech will be translated to other players according to their character, and the speaker’s, language skill.

It also has tracking features for the GM to run encounters, NPC, item and story entries and much more.

I recommend taking a look at the introduction videos and reading the included PDF guide:

“Strap on your shields! Unsheathe your swords! The crimson banner is burning! Barbarians raid the coast. Dwarven war engines besiege our cities in the south. The east revolts, refugees bring plague and famine, and what do the Elves do? They flee. A crimson exodus of sails as they run from a crumbling Empire. To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. Now is the time of Men. Let us fight! Let us all unite, to free ourselves from the tyranny of Elves!To build a new Empire. To crush the invaders and make our enemies fear us once again!”

With that call to arms I can produly announce that the second edition of Crimson Exodus is out! A highly praised fantasy roleplaying game which spawned the Fantasy Dice rules, and now available in an updated new edition, with new artwork and as a fan friendly PDF with no watermarking and a creative commons license, and in print as hardcover and softcover from lulu.

So what did people say about the first edition…

“First and foremost: I think I didn’t see such a quality and innovations since the release of D&D 3rd edition. …this book ROCKS!” – 5/5
- Paolo P.

“Simply put, the setting is dripping with flavor and has years of gaming potential in the core book alone – there’s no clear-cut good/evil, lots of shades of gray.” – 5/5
- Adam M.

“I enjoyed this book a great deal. The resolution systems has a unique twist on the roll and keep system found in such games as Legend of the 5 Rings rpg.” – 5/5
- David

Turbo Dice, free under creative-commons license and available now for your gaming pleasure.

Turbo Dice is a fast, light weight version of Fantasy Dice intended for pickup games, rule-light games and as an introduction to the Fantasy Dice roleplaying game system. Turbo Dice is completely free. You may share and copy it as you like and make modifications to it and use it for your own games as per the creative commons license.

Turbo Dice is simple and fast, but still has teeth.

Also, last few days of the Crimson Exodus 2nd edition kickstarter so please check that out.

Today I decided to remove watermarking from ALL of my PDFs. This came about after a brief exchange over on the RPGNet forum where it was pointed out to me – to paraphrase – that watermarking your books is almost like assuming your customers are thieves. There were other arguments too, but I never had very strong reasons for using watermarking in the first place and generally frown upon DRM technologies as they penalise legitimate users, while those who do not pay arguably get a better product. I believe that anyone who has purchased any of my books in the past can simply re-download it to get a watermark-free version, and if you run into any difficulties just get in touch.

This has also renewed my interest in releasing the second edition of Crimson Exodus under a Creative Commons license to let others remix, share, tweak, and build upon the system and setting. Only a few days left on the kickstarter for this project, but it is almost there now and I’m positive about the chances of success. I am also very excited at the prospect of working with one of two very talented artists for this project: Eric Quiqleyand Joshua Pinkas. Check out their excellent portfolios.

In other news here is another review I discovered recently where Nathan gave Fantasy Dice a Whirl, and here is a transcript of a Q&A Session with Dan Davenport.

If you still want more take a look at the Fantasy Dice ruleset tutorials for the Fantasy Grounds II ruleset.